4 ms·

Seems OP's reaction is like what is rife in Australia as 'tall-poppy syndrome' and cutting down prominent achievers. We collectively dislike promoters, but isn'

by prawn 6y ago

Seems OP's reaction is like what is rife in Australia as 'tall-poppy syndrome' and cutting down prominent achievers. We collectively dislike promoters, but isn't doing something like writing a book to draw attention to your SaaS product exactly the sort of thing a founder should be doing? Especially given it worked in bringing them customers and attention. If you think they're too confident in their assertions, it's easy enough to ignore them.

threeseed 6y ago
We celebrate sports stars, CEOs from Atlassian/Canva/etc. It's not about being successful. It's about not having an ego and acting like you're better than everyone else just because you are successful. Americans are much more willing to tolerate this behaviour than Australians.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  To the credit of Americans IMO. Ego is quite common among high achievers and often beneficial as a motivator or confidence booster. Unexamined and disproportionate egos are self punishing as they directly harm chances of success. AFAICT any additional social stigma accomplishes nothing except perhaps the soothing of egos by less successful people. There are real disparities in ability & quality between people for which proven success is the strongest (and perhaps the only real) signal.
Tainnor 6y ago
That doesn't imply that I have to like his self-promotion book. After all, if I'm to read a book I want to get something out of it. As I already mentioned, the book has good parts, but it reads quite jarring in many places. Also, I guess this is personal, but a little humility is good for everyone, IMHO, and doesn't necessarily contradict a healthy dose of self-confidence either. DHH seems to have little of it — at least judging from his books and also from his Twitter.
- prawn 6y ago
  This: "co-wrote several books on company culture that are glorified ads for basecamp" just doesn't seem too questionable to me. The readership made them popular books. His job, in part, is to promote his products - my interpretation of your comment was that your thoughts on his plight were swayed by him writing something that promoted his business. I find him a bit over the top, so I don't follow him on Twitter. I haven't read their books. I've used but didn't continue to use their products. But that doesn't really sway my thoughts on this recent episode. I think there's a lot of cross-purpose arguing about it all. It's likely that they're a bit painful to work for AND that as founders they'd have concerns about their paid staff getting distracted from their mission at work.
  - MisterBastahrd 6y ago
    Anyone who has written more than one book on their own company culture has zero idea what their company's culture actually is.
- simondotau 6y ago
  Just because someone isn't skilled at the traditional, mainstream Western methods of conveying empathy doesn't mean they actually lack empathy. This ought to be obvious when considering persons on the extreme end of the autism spectrum, but as time goes on we're learning that the spectrum might subtly encompass far more people than we ever realised. (With no small amount of irony, I find that many "normal" people have a very hard time truly empathising with the ways in which people on the spectrum are different.) But it doesn't even have to be something as categorisable as the spectrum. Just as people don't choose their genetics or initial brain chemistry, it's equally true to say that nobody chose their genetic parents or their upbringing. People are the product of their environment; we would do well to keep this in mind even when we (rightly) castigate people for their misdeeds.
  - skissane 6y ago
    > but as time goes on we're learning that the spectrum might subtly encompass far more people than we ever realised. The autism spectrum is a continuum that fades into normality, with no clear boundary. Part of that continuum is individuals with broad autism phenotype (BAP), who have significantly more autistic traits than the average person does, but not enough to reach the diagnostic cutoff for ASD. That cutoff varies from clinician to clinician, and is moving over time, which renders the boundary between BAP and ASD particularly fuzzy. > (With no small amount of irony, I find that many "normal" people have a very hard time truly empathising with the ways in which people on the spectrum are different.) Damian Milton speaks of the "double empathy problem" – it is claimed that a defining trait of autism is deficits in empathy, and yet very many non-autistic people are at least as deficient in empathy for autistic people.

by prawn 6y ago

threeseed 6y ago

We celebrate sports stars, CEOs from Atlassian/Canva/etc. It's not about being successful. It's about not having an ego and acting like you're better than everyone else just because you are successful. Americans are much more willing to tolerate this behaviour than Australians.

themacguffinman 6y ago
To the credit of Americans IMO. Ego is quite common among high achievers and often beneficial as a motivator or confidence booster. Unexamined and disproportionate egos are self punishing as they directly harm chances of success. AFAICT any additional social stigma accomplishes nothing except perhaps the soothing of egos by less successful people. There are real disparities in ability & quality between people for which proven success is the strongest (and perhaps the only real) signal.

Tainnor 6y ago

That doesn't imply that I have to like his self-promotion book. After all, if I'm to read a book I want to get something out of it. As I already mentioned, the book has good parts, but it reads quite jarring in many places. Also, I guess this is personal, but a little humility is good for everyone, IMHO, and doesn't necessarily contradict a healthy dose of self-confidence either. DHH seems to have little of it — at least judging from his books and also from his Twitter.

prawn 6y ago
This: "co-wrote several books on company culture that are glorified ads for basecamp" just doesn't seem too questionable to me. The readership made them popular books. His job, in part, is to promote his products - my interpretation of your comment was that your thoughts on his plight were swayed by him writing something that promoted his business. I find him a bit over the top, so I don't follow him on Twitter. I haven't read their books. I've used but didn't continue to use their products. But that doesn't really sway my thoughts on this recent episode. I think there's a lot of cross-purpose arguing about it all. It's likely that they're a bit painful to work for AND that as founders they'd have concerns about their paid staff getting distracted from their mission at work.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  Anyone who has written more than one book on their own company culture has zero idea what their company's culture actually is.
simondotau 6y ago
Just because someone isn't skilled at the traditional, mainstream Western methods of conveying empathy doesn't mean they actually lack empathy. This ought to be obvious when considering persons on the extreme end of the autism spectrum, but as time goes on we're learning that the spectrum might subtly encompass far more people than we ever realised. (With no small amount of irony, I find that many "normal" people have a very hard time truly empathising with the ways in which people on the spectrum are different.) But it doesn't even have to be something as categorisable as the spectrum. Just as people don't choose their genetics or initial brain chemistry, it's equally true to say that nobody chose their genetic parents or their upbringing. People are the product of their environment; we would do well to keep this in mind even when we (rightly) castigate people for their misdeeds.
- skissane 6y ago
  > but as time goes on we're learning that the spectrum might subtly encompass far more people than we ever realised. The autism spectrum is a continuum that fades into normality, with no clear boundary. Part of that continuum is individuals with broad autism phenotype (BAP), who have significantly more autistic traits than the average person does, but not enough to reach the diagnostic cutoff for ASD. That cutoff varies from clinician to clinician, and is moving over time, which renders the boundary between BAP and ASD particularly fuzzy. > (With no small amount of irony, I find that many "normal" people have a very hard time truly empathising with the ways in which people on the spectrum are different.) Damian Milton speaks of the "double empathy problem" – it is claimed that a defining trait of autism is deficits in empathy, and yet very many non-autistic people are at least as deficient in empathy for autistic people.